Elijah’s Mermaid (46 page)

I have not told Elijah but sometimes at night I still see Tip’s face. He lurks in the shadows from which he peers, blue-green eyes brimming over with jealousy. Sharp fingers try to snatch the ring that I wear on my left hand these days, a token of marriage that never was bestowed on me by Osborne Black. This gold band once belonged to Augustus’s wife, and though I have not been wed as such, Elijah says we shall be soon.

It does for the sake of propriety. And yet, I think it may bring bad luck, with her having died when her son was born. Will I also die, when my child is born? The doctor says my time is near, the conception having been last year, in that Indian summer in Dolphin House. But the doctor thinks there is something wrong. My ankles are swelling and painful. The flesh there is stretched as tight as a drum, to which he applies the leeches, to thin and purify the blood. I hate the way the skin blisters up, and how the bandages ooze with blood. But he says this letting may clear my mind, for Augustus is not the only one to be taking on queer fancies. I try to keep them to myself. I lie meek and mute upon this bed which once belonged to Lily, which is so much larger than the one in Elijah’s old bedroom next door. Lily has cleared all her things away; and the big doll’s house and the toys of her youth are boxed away in the attics now, though perhaps we shall bring them down – in time.

Lily sleeps in a room above. It once belonged to her grandmother. Often I hear her rise in the night, her footsteps creaky, creeping on boards before padding downstairs to the drawing room. That is where Augustus sleeps, no longer able to manage the stairs, his mind sedated by opiates that the doctor comes to administer, prompt every evening at six o’clock.

Before being confined to this bed I used to spend hours at
his side; my feet raised high upon a stool while attempting to sew some baby clothes. But my fingers are fat and clumsy, and really, there is no need. Lily has found some tiny things in an old chest of drawers on the attic floor. They must have been worn by Gabriel. Such intricate smocking and stitching they have. I could never make anything so fine.

Now I only lie and read. Elijah brings books from the study shelves, many once published by Frederick Hall, as were the magazines they’ve kept, the same as those I used to keep beneath my pillow in Cheyne Walk – before I became an artist’s muse.

And now, I am a muse again. I pose for Elijah’s drawings, though I really can’t imagine why anyone should want to see a woman who sprawls in her bed all day, who is growing as bloated as a whale.

But Elijah does – that is when he is not out and about, working with his camera. And if she does not go with him, and if Augustus sleeps peacefully, then Lily comes to sit at my side, such smiling amazement in her eyes when I say, ‘Look, Lily!’ and lift up the sheets, and show her the little thrusting kicks that poke beneath my belly’s flesh. This child of mine twists and turns so much. Lily thinks it may be dancing. I think it is due to the weather – so warm it is this May.

I wake at dawn, too restless for sleep. Where Elijah’s hand is cupping my breast, a tiny white glistening pearl of milk is dripping from the nipple. How can I not think of Angelo – the painted cherub, the libertine, who reached out to touch a mermaid’s breast which was dripping with crystals of water?

The memory disturbs me, as does the drumming pain in my head, and I have such a sudden yearning to hear the sound of water again, to see it, to feel it lap my flesh, to soothe this aching in my legs.

I leave Elijah sleeping fast, his brown cheek against the white pillow, his brow as untroubled as that of a boy and no signs of the trauma befallen him, except for the grey growing into his
hair. He is so very beautiful, a regular Adonis. If only I had the talent to draw, every picture I made would be of him; my love all-consuming, too clinging, too selfish. Does that make me too much like Osborne Black?

Osborne
. I wonder what can have gone on in his life since that night on the Mall when the Thames flooded up. I wonder, is it wrong of me to find myself thinking about him still? But I lived with the man so many years. At times, there was almost happiness, those early days on Margate sands when I lay in the warmth of the dawning sun, before his vision grew too dark, before he was taken up with the madness of hiding his mermaid away from the world.

Has he found me in this hiding place? Sometimes I feel the heat of his eyes, observing, scrutinising me. Sometimes, I swear, he speaks to me. Can you hear him now? He whispers through the rustle of leaves, through the hushing of my cotton gown as I make my way down through the gardens again. More impatient are his sighs when I push through the tangles of shrubbery, and the dangling lace of a willow tree, where I kneel among yellow marsh marigolds, and the lovely purple hyacinths, and the unfurling fronds of luxuriant ferns uncoiling like snakes in the warmth of the sun. You can almost taste the pollen spores from the cow parsley, daisies and dandelions that make up this posy in my hands, the stems wrapped in ribbons of long green grass. You can almost hear the creaking of sap rising up through the wood of the branches – or is that the scratch of Osborne’s pen?

I glance around, breaths trembling, my pulse a gushing in my ears, as loud as the ocean sucking on rocks, through which Osborne tells me to lift my hems and step down from the bank to the velvet-mossed stones, to step down from those stones on into the stream, where, at first, the water is a shock, so cold it almost takes my breath. But the tingling sensation soon turns to a numbness, and I think I should like to submerge my whole body – but then lose my grip on the ragged bouquet, petals floating all about as I try to find some purchase below, spreading my fingers through buttery sludge – though I hope to avoid
any broken shells that lurk there like razors to cut my flesh. As sharp as Tip Thomas’s fingernails.

Buzz buzz
. Do you hear that sound? Is Tip Thomas really the devil incarnate? Do you only have to think his name and ‘ta-da’, here he is, conjured up again?
You
might say that thrumming vibration of air is caused by a hovering dragonfly – the one with the glowering face of a woman, bulging red eyes and a wide red mouth, and veiled wings of black netting on either side. But I know I have entered some magical world where people are insects, this one Mrs Hibbert. And look! Here is Tip Thomas again, shilly-shallying his way across the weed, disguised as a water boatman he is, a green beetle propelled by two paddling legs which look like the oars of a boat, like the boat that Tip rowed when he fished on the Thames, when he found himself a mermaid’s child.

The Thames is dirty. This water is clean. This water will wash my sins away. I shall soon be too slippery for Tip to hold. He shall not blag this child of mine. But, oh, how dizzy I become, and slowly, slowly the mud sinks beneath me. My mouth opens wider and liquid seeps in and while gazing up through a swirling lens I feel a violent stabbing pain.

My little fish’s time has come!

Gasping to draw breath into my lungs, I drag myself to the shingle beach and crawl into a nest of ferns, grinding my teeth, rocking back and forth, at last looking up to see a face.

Elijah is here, but upside down, like Jesus on an asylum wall – and, like Jesus, Elijah will save me now, splashing towards me through the waves, shouting, ‘Pearl . . . what are you doing here?’

Where am I? Is this Margate? For a moment, I cannot think. My world is nothing but sensory touch, dampness and greyness and cold hard stone, and the glisten of shells beneath velvety moss, and the patterns they make – like stars, like moons.

And then I remember. This is the grotto. I say, ‘I am your mermaid.’

Why does Elijah not reply? There is only the silver of tears in
his eyes. There is only the glint of the gold on my hand when my wet fingers twine with his, turning and squeezing, gripping hard when he pulls me from darkness and into the light.

And now, when he carries me back to the house, as Tip Thomas once carried an infant child, I wrap my arms around his neck and nuzzle my face against his breast. I see the vibrant green of the lawns, and the red brick walls encroached with vines, and the crisp white sheets upon the bed. I lift my head from the pillow there, and between bloody thighs is a crowning head, black hair all filmed with a greasy wax. I hear a high-pitched screaming sound, like the wailing of a cat in the night. When I open my eyes I see Lily. She is holding a bundle in her arms. I hardly dare ask, but can’t help myself, such a desperate plea when I start to cry, ‘Does it have a tail? Does it have webbed feet?’

Elijah sits on the bed at my side. He takes the bundle from Lily’s arms and places it gently into mine. He pulls the wrapping cloth away and says, ‘Look, Pearl . . . a little boy. He has two legs. He has ten toes.’

What if he is only humouring me? I have to be sure, to look again – but there is no scaly fishy flesh, no flaps of skin between the toes, and when my baby whimpers it is only a moment or two he complains before I hold him to my breast. My fingers stroke his downy cheek. He stares back up, through unblinking eyes, eyes like his father’s, filled with light, eyes looking into the depths of my soul, and I feel the first needling prick of love like a splinter of ice that is melting, in its place only sweet warm water.

LILY

He is harmless – ye are sinful
, –

Ye are troubled – he, at ease:

From his slumber, virtue winful

Floweth outward with increase
–

Dare not bless him! But be blessed by his peace – and go in peace
.

From ‘A Child Asleep’ by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

A warm July day, late afternoon, and almost a year since Osborne Black had first brought Pearl to Kingsland House. In some ways, it was as if nothing had changed, except we were all of us different – with the sole exception of Ellen Page, no more or less wizened than before, and still pouring out gallons of over-stewed tea which spilled from the cups that rattled in saucers when handed round to those of us who made up the picnic that day on the lawns. Over that came our laughter, the gurgling child, the sweet piercing song of a blackbird that perched in the apple tree above.

What an idyllic scene it made. But real life is not a fairy tale. There are too many painful memories, however the surface is smoothed and glossed – much like the garden in which we were sitting. Since his health had been almost fully restored, some parts had been tamed by Elijah, but the rest remained entirely wild, for without hiring in any extra help – which we were reluctant to do back then, not wanting Pearl’s presence too widely known – there was no amount of cutting or pruning could quell the rampant growth that spring, every plant and tree
grown very tall as if Nature herself had been intent on creating a fortress around us.

And that is how Papa liked it, Papa whose health would never mend, although there were days when he rallied again, when we walked him out in his big bath chair, in which he was sitting that day of the picnic, dozing beneath the ivy leaves which formed a natural bower of shade, although no roses bloomed just then.

Pearl lay on a blanket spread over the grass, sheltered beneath a parasol. You would never imagine how ill she’d been during those months of her pregnancy, suffering with those ‘maternal fits’, yet before they began she had seemed so well, considering her undernourished state. She ate. She rested. She grew more flesh. The only strange behaviour at first was her tendency to go wandering off, when Elijah would find her out in the gardens or, more often than not, beside the stream.

That’s where he found her the day of the birth, where she might well have drowned or caught her death, lying there drenched and babbling nonsense, her hair and body caked in mud, resembling nothing quite so much as the mummified mermaid we’d seen in Cremorne. But then when the labour was over and done, when she cradled the child in her arms, she smiled, she was calm, she was ‘sensible’, and the doctor’s explanation was that poisons flowing through her blood had caused her mind to hallucinate, before being expelled with the fluids of birth. But to those of us who could only observe, it seemed as if demons had been cast out, and a cherub born to take their place, and I wonder if any child was loved as much as my darling nephew, who was named Angel Augustus Lamb.

The happiness we knew back then, three generations beneath the one roof, bound by the ties of love and affection, was tempered only by the loss of my mother. How I grieved for someone not even dead – and to wake that morning in Burlington Row still expecting to find her sharing my bed, and no message she left, not a word of goodbye. At least I had the memory of those hours I spent embraced by her arms, falling
asleep while the candle burned, gazing at Isabella’s face, Isabella’s breaths falling soft on my cheek, so much more than a dream or a picture then, even if a picture is all that remains, now set on my nightstand in Kingsland House, and the face looking out from behind the glass uncannily like my very own.

I see Isabella every day, whenever I look in a mirror. Every day I think of Frederick Hall and what his pride condemned her to.

Samuel Beresford wrote occasionally, though he never mentioned Freddie’s name. The week before Christmas he sent us a gift with a note to explain how sorry he was not to deliver it personally. It was a wicker basket; inside which we found a boiled ham, a plum pudding, two dozen speckled eggs, some chocolate dagrees, spices and jams, and a dozen bottles of champagne – exactly the sort of extravagant gift that Freddie would have sent before, which only made me come to suspect that Samuel was not the true benefactor.

The following day something else arrived, a greetings card in a padded box, and the print on the front boldly embossed with a scroll that said
Santa and His Works
. There were pictures of Santa and his elves preparing the presents and toys for his sleigh, and Samuel Beresford wrote inside that he thought I would like it. And I did, very much – despite the rather juvenile theme, and an all too obvious lack of romance – but I was inspired to take up a pen and concoct some stories of my own – something for the very young to read.